Founder Institute: Seattle has the most promising entrepreneurs

November 25, 2009 11:08 AMAnthony Ha

As The Founder Institute (the entrepreneur training program developed by TheFunded‘s Adeo Ressi) expands to cities around the country, it’s gathering some provocative data about how aspiring startup founders stack up in different regions. Specifically, the institute says that in the latest batch of applicants, Seattle’s entrepreneurs have the highest chance of success.

The institute asks applicants to provide a full LinkedIn profile and to answer two questions: “Why do you think you can be an entrepreneur?” And “What are you passionate about?” From that information, Ressi says he worked with a social science researcher to develop a system that predicts entrepreneurial success. Here’s how Ressi described the test in an interview with VentureBeat:

With this test, with greater accuracy than 95 percent of published social science research, we can predict the following two things: First, the quality of the idea that you will develop in the program — we don’t actually ask you for the idea when you apply, because everybody knows as an entrepreneur, your idea will change. And the second thing is how you will perform at building your business during the four months of the program, which we think is a proxy for how you will perform building your business. Some famous entrepreneurs have asked me to take the test.

Ressi says the institute has enrolled 100 founders in five programs across the country. Here’s how the average scores compare between the programs:

Seattle (2.72 / 5.00)

Silicon Valley (2.66 / 5.00)

New York (2.54 / 5.00)

Washington DC (2.42 / 5.00)

San Diego and Orange County (2.26 / 5.00)

So if there’s an explosion of successful startups in Seattle in the next few years, we can credit Ressi with prediction. (Not that the region is suffering from a drought of entrepreneurs right now …)